Two bits of exciting news from Los Angeles-area music-makers. The first pertains to Avi Buffalo, who I wrote about for the Weekly back in October (and whose first Sub Pop release made it into INCHES). The second comes from up-and-coming L.A. indie label IAMSOUND and involves a ton of great local artists including Nosaj Thing and Ryan Heffington’s We Are The World. Since I’m in a beastly mood, click the linx for the links.

Last week I broke the news (via West Coast Sound) that Long Beach band-of-teens Avi Buffalo had signed to Sub Pop. This week, the LA Weekly has published my feature on the band, which goes a bit more in-depth on the group’s extremely talented leader, Avi Zahner-Isenberg. Read “Young, Gifted and Slack” here, and watch Zahner-Isenberg perform “Jessica” below.

Avi Buffalo (the name of the man and the band) played the third installment of his/its May residency at The Echo last night. The 18-year old frontman seems smaller and younger in person than he does in pictures, but he’s an even larger presence than one would expect. It’s mostly the effect of that impossibly youthful voice, which sounds not unlike the imagined middleground between Devendra and Danielson. Also helpful was the general freewheeling-ness of this particular set, in which Avi eschewed favorites like “Summer Cum” (playing in “Now Hear This”) in favor of loudness and jamitude.

The following clips feature poor lighting but decent sound. The first song is one of the night’s quieter ones, while the second is the band’s 7-minute closer.